A slew of OEMs -- including Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930), The Lenovo Group, Ltd. (HKG:0992), Dell Inc. (DELL), and Acer Inc. (TPE:2357) -- have attacked the OS [1][2][3][4] and refused to expand sales of Windows RT products. In the end, these snubs have compounded the OEM-highlighted gripes, to sink Windows RT device prices and limit sales of Windows RT tablets to a mere 200,000 units in Q1 2013. Some analysts have suggested Microsoft should kill off its ARM offerings.

Microsoft has adamantly stood behind the product, saying it will continue to produce ARM-compatible operating systems. Now it's getting some support from its OEM partners.

The latest OEM to step up is NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA), makers of the Tegra series of ARM processors. While some early Windows RT product has been powered by NVIDIA's rival Qualcomm, Inc.'s (QCOM) Snapdragon processor line, Tegra has scored many design wins as well, including the Lenovo Yoga 11, ASUSTek Computer, Inc. (TPE:2357) VivoTab RT, and the Surface RT.

Rene Haas, NVIDIA Computing VP

Rene Haas, NVIDIA's vice president of computing products says, his company is eager to get in the Windows RT game, tellingComputerWorld that Tegra chips will be found in "multiple" upcoming Windows devices.

On the low sales and OEM criticism, he counters:

Nvidia is very invested and very committed to Windows RT, and we feel it has a bright future. We feel this [platform] is where things are going. We're not discouraged by the start and very, very excited going forward.

It's very early in what is a very significant transition for the PC platform. If you step back and look at how we use computers today, everything is driven by mobile and access to information everywhere. Windows RT devices are very thin and have a very long battery life, and these are the key tenets of what a PC will look like in the future. Windows RT is an initial effort by Microsoft to move the PC into the tablet arena, which starts with RT powered by the ARM architecture.

There's no reason to believe ARM won't have dominance in tablets as well. The faster [the] growth [of ARM-compatible Windows Store apps] continues, the better for the overall platform, but we're in the first inning of this ballgame and it's not over by any means.

Mr. Haas says he personally uses the Surface RT as his day-to-day device. He says he gets around 14 hours per charge, commenting, "When I flip it shut with the keyboard, it's like any other tablet. There's no fan and no rotating hard drive, so it's light. I get a quick boot, so if I'm sitting in an airport or a coach seat, I can easily shut it off, put it in the seat and when I pull it back out, I don't have to wait 10 seconds to resume work. It's easy to run around with."

If there was one shred of critique in his defense of WOA/Windows RT, it was that he commented that Microsoft needed to continue its efforts to expand app selection to grow Windows RT device sales. This commentary echoes that of NVIDIA CEO Jen Hsun Huang who in a March interview pled to the "Outlook god" and Microsoft to release a Windows RT compatible version of the Microsoft's popular email client app.